


Alamo

by Iknowthebattle



Category: Actor RPF, Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: Brotherhood, Childhood Memories, Gen, M/M, Memories, Past Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 13:58:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14082465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iknowthebattle/pseuds/Iknowthebattle
Summary: One of the things that has stuck with me the longest and had the most effect on me during this journey was the interview in France when Armie said he had known Timmy so long that he was now a part of his childhood memories.To me this is so beyond intimate in a non-romantic or sexual way that it defies logic or rational understanding.This is part poetry, part childhood, part history and philosophy, part love story, part something else.





	Alamo

You is yours. Me is mine.

Before we were Us.

It feels like a river crossing a lake in his mind, but he knows it is the ocean.

He knows it is the jumping off point.

It feels like a creek hollow but he knows it is a sea cave full of hidden treasures.

He knows it is his secret place.

It feels like light playing on the sides of walls but he knows it is the sun.

It feels like horizontal lines are where it all began but he knows it was vertical.

Timmy is there, sometimes in the ocean, kicking up water in-between waves as a child, as a teenager, as a young man.

Timmy is there sometimes as a toddler, crawling around beside toy trucks and GI Joe’s on plush carpets and bamboo floors, building sand castles beside Armie, their baby hands, fat knuckles vying for space in the grains, pulling at the plastic bucket and shovel, who will dig and who will fill the empty space?

Armie sees Timmy sometimes in the back seat of an old Cadillac, their 8 year old knobby knees knocking as the car hit never-repaired pot holes, missing teeth and grape juice stained chins laughing, the windows rolled all the way down, and a faceless driver. There were no real adults in this world, in this version of his memories.

Their voices are like the grownups in Charlie Brown’s universe, all muffled sound, serving no purpose but to annoy, to distract from baseball games and bigger worlds inside themselves.

There couldn’t possibly be a time before him. There was not a wall Armie had built up around him that did not have Timothee’s writing on it.

Timmy is there at his High School football games, sitting a few bleachers up and away from him, legs apart, hands clasped between his knees, looking out at the field, but not paying attention to the game, looking at Armie when Armie wasn’t looking at him.

He was always wearing a hoodie to Armie’s Letterman’s jacket, emblazoned with medals he had never earned. Armie would pretend to watch the cheerleaders, and his neck would ache by the end of the evening from craning to see the skinny legged boy in the bleachers.

Timmy was always pale in these flashbacks, his body never absorbing sun, turning red and hot only to go solid white and see through again.

Armie kept him in warm, sunny climates in his memories, an Island then Texas; its own kind of fucked up landmass.

He swore when he graduated that Timmy was not in his class, but on the front row, watching, clapping, happy and proud, yelling _“Fuck yeah, brother!”_  He was whistling using his teeth and fingers, embarrassing him.

There was the memory of Armie nearly drowning, body and head totally submerged in icy green and blue water, waves overhead, and he felt himself give up, let his bones and flesh give way to the weight of water that once held him up without effort.

He was an excellent swimmer but this time he stopped holding his breath and tried to flood his lungs; he opened his eyes so they could burn, so he could see the rocks right under his feet. It would feel good to lie down at last.

But now there is a boat, the shadow of a boat above, and an arch-angel diving in, the sun behind this mythical creature, a young rescuer, protector. Then there are arms under his shoulders, forcing him up to the surface, holding him up so that he looked like Christ being removed from the cross, there would be no martyrdom, no not today, not on his watch.

Then the water god, the sea nymph, Timmy, rowed him to shore, splaying him out on hot, white sand, his feet wrapped in seaweed which nimble fingers carefully removed.

 _You found me_ , he remembers saying, eyes closed, but he could still see him, he could feel Timmy nod, wet hair dripping onto his calves.

He would remember making sand angels then, Timmy beside him, one eye closed, but looking at one another, heads turned in the side, laughing, sun-drunk, never under grey skies.

Armie’s record books, year books, baby books, never-kept journals were full of moments like this.

Timmy was in Armie’s New Testament, the better book, the healing chapters re-written to scrub out false idols and vengeful Fathers and Kings. Timmy walked with him on water, helped him turn water to wine and back again, they had the Last Supper together cloaked in royal purple and barefoot.

Armie knows he and Timmy were there when Zeus cut them in half, from four legs into two, and they found one another again, and that this was natural and destined all at once.

He knew Socrates told Plato great tales about them, half-horse, half-men. They were two whole men that Plato wrote about from opposite sides of the galaxy joining, _the best of boys and youths._

Armie remembered long, hot walks in summer, always summer, collecting dead bumble bees found in the woods in bunches, as if everyone had given up together. He had gathered them up, dead stingers hanging from their fuzzy bodies. He had given them a proper burial under fresh dirt, yellow dandelions serving as flowers.

 He had cried that day because he remembered sitting on his Grandfather’s front porch the summer before and swatting at and killing bees with a tennis racket because they dared to burrow into the wood of the house and maybe he made them die.

But then he remembered a pair of white sneakers running to him, not afraid of getting dirty, hitting the ground hard, hugging him from behind where he was squatting by the woods, the brand new mourning ground he had given birth to.  

 _Its okay, Armie. They died protecting the Queen,_ Timmy had said against the crown of his hair, arms around his shoulders. They both smelled like sweat and must, boys in summer, lost and bored and sad.

Armie wanted to burn down a church that same summer, and Timmy said no.

Armie had stolen a car and Timmy had jumped in the passenger seat, both of them ten years old and he could still hear Timmy’s screams and laughter as he turned corners too quickly, somehow able to see over the steering wheel, already towering over the useless bigger people. He remembered Timmy pointing to a field and telling him _drive faster_ and he did and they rode in lines and circles until they ran out of gas.

Timmy wanted to read in the shade and Armie pretended he didn’t want to but they lay there, Armie’s head on Timmy’s belly an entire afternoon. They read _The Hardy Boys_ and _Goosebumps_ and giggled at the Playboys stolen from his Grandfather’s trunk, full of guns and old pipes.

They were too scared to return them so the boys buried them in the same field where the car had been driven until the grass became dirt again, one digging, one filling the space.

Armie remembers teaching Timmy how to pack for trips far and near, to bring only the things he would always need; sunshine, magic, sunscreen, books, a charger, sunglasses, clean socks, a map of the world inside his head.

Timmy had sat at Armie’s childhood kitchen table, feet swinging, never touching the floor, teaching him French in quiet whispers, fingers moving across a page of words and pictures, Armie teaching Timmy the broken Spanish that his family refused to learn.

Armie remembers endless afternoons of romance languages and potato chips and apple slices.

_There was the time, how could he forget?_

The time when Armie and Timmy sniffed sharpie pens and bottles of glue in Armie’s bedroom, collapsing across his bed, their heads spinning, laughing until they felt sick and then they were quiet and Armie felt brave and stupid enough to put his hand down his pants and hoped Timmy would do the same.

He didn’t for a long time, just watched Armie, both of them trying not to throw up, headaches already clouding their vision, young, pink brains not used to toxins.

 _I’m gonna throw up,_ Timmy had groaned into the mattress, his eyes still on Armie’s hand down the front of his Levi’s.

Armie punched his shoulder, not hard with his other hand and shook his head.

_“You can’t, my Mom will be so mad.”_

_“Your Mom is always mad,”_ Timmy said miserable.

Timmy had sat up then, and mimicked Armie, his own tiny hand finding its way down past layers, if they didn’t unbutton and unzip their jeans it didn’t count.

They played like this, looking at one another, stomach and heads spinning, Timmy finished first, falling back on Armie’s favorite purple monkey, Tinker, and Armie let himself go too, his body landing beside Timmy, Tinker standing guard, keeping watch for anyone at the door.

It happened again and again in Junior High and High School and Armie remembered each time it felt like an accident, but he and Timmy always moved along parallel lines, before school, after prom, and finally just before childhood memories became adult moments, a sloppy kiss or two.

Armie remembers boxing up his childhood bedroom. Tinker the monkey on top, now god knows where, and he felt himself miss him already, and he remembers telling Timmy not to lift the heavy boxes; that he would take them out to the car himself.

Armie watched them turn around seasons, watched them growing older, and then becoming younger again, pulling out memories and putting them back again.

One day they could turn cart wheels on Armie’s Mom’s front lawn, ignoring warnings from inside, and the next they could go to college only to drop out and pretend to go back, and then they were back at the sea again on an empty beach with a secret club only boys were allowed to join, pinky swears and blood bonds.

Armie’s favorite memory was racing Timmy along the shore when they were thirteen years old, the year before High School.

Timmy always won. He told himself he let him win. The truth was that Timmy was faster, lighter, his toes barely touching down on sand. Armie let himself be pulled in by the tide; he liked the feel of the heavy, cold water, he liked the idea of diving in and swimming until there was no land behind him.

Timmy was the only brother in his recollections.

He was always there.

It was him again and again, restless, relentless, quiet and waiting.

It was the two of them in treetops, in stolen cars, crying only to one another. It was Armie and Timmy under covers in rooms lit only by night lights shaped like rabbits or frogs.

 _You’re Pony Boy and I’m Johnny,_ Timmy said matter-of-fact-like one day on the school swing set, legs out in front of  him, head titled back to watch the sky go back and forth.

Armie was swinging beside him, aiming to go higher and faster than Timmy, and he laughed.

_“Everyone loves Johnny.”_

Timmy smiled, knowing this.

 _“But Pony Boy is the hero!”_ Timmy said to comfort.

But Armie knew he was Johnny, the one running away from home, taking refuge in a house of brothers somewhere else.

There wasn’t a second on the battlefield where Timmy was not invading.

Every scene on every reel on every inch of film Timmy had a cameo.

Armie pressed rewind and fast forward, and stretched a single Italian summer back in time to Texas and Cayman summers and winters, all the way back to a hospital ward, babes sharing a glass crib, tiny bracelets with one another’s names typed and wrapped around brand new wrists.


End file.
